


you tell him that you love him

by ApatheticRobots



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, No Dialogue, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: "You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you" except the car is a ship, and you're both giant alien robots.
Relationships: Breakdown/Knock Out
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	you tell him that you love him

**Author's Note:**

> yearning: the fic
> 
> This is my first real foray into 2nd person in..... years. i was thinkin about knock out and breakdown and i got sad :(
> 
> unbeta'd

You tell him that you love him.

Lounging on his front beside you, reading through a datapad, his red optics flicker to you in surprise. There’s a moment of silence, then he laughs, and he tells you that you don’t know what love is. He tells you that there’s a big difference between love and lust, and what you have is temporary at best. He tells you that you’re cute, but that’s going a little far. 

Which is understandable. You’ve known him for all of an evening. And while it was a very _nice_ evening, it was still just one evening. 

That doesn’t stop him from clinging to you when the fighting breaks out and the two of you run away from the chaos together. He grabs your arm hard enough to leave dents in it, the wings on his back fluttering anxiously, and drags you through the alleys in the way only a mech used to navigating them would be able to. You’re almost a little too big, and your armor scrapes along the walls as you run. He promises to fix it later.

You tell him that you love him.

He doesn’t hear you, of course-- he’s deep in stasis. Changing your frame type is a lot different than just swapping alt-modes. Especially changing from the high-maintenance, high energy demanding frame of a Seeker to the much simpler one of a grounder. Granted, a grounder built for speed, but there’s still a big difference between the fuel requirements of a frame with wheels and one with wings. Given all this, he had to go under.

You’re not sure why he called you of all mechs to keep an eye on him while he went through the procedure. Sure, you’ve kept in semi-regular contact since you parted ways after that first meeting, but he must have other mechs he knows better. Other mechs he _trusts_ more. Other mechs who could protect him.

You could offline him here and now and he’d never even have a chance to defend himself. There are plenty of sharp objects around the room, and with him as deep in recharge as he is, it’s doubtful his proximity sensors would wake him in time.

But you don’t. You wouldn’t, not in the span of your combined lifetimes. And maybe somehow, despite the fact you’ve never said as such, he knows that. And maybe that’s why he called you.

He wakes, and you’re still there, and he gives you a tired grin and wiggles his shoulders to emphasize the tires now sticking out from his back where sleek wings once rested. You tell him he looks beautiful. His grin gets a bit brighter and he tells you he knows, but you can tell that he’s glad for the reassurance.

You tell him that you love him.

The cold gray form of your homeworld grows smaller and smaller as your shuttle’s autopilot flies you away. He’s sitting on the bench across from you, leaning against the sill and looking out the window. For a second you’re not sure if he heard you, too busy watching Cybertron disappear into the dark recesses of space, but then-- without looking away from the window-- he reaches over and wraps his servo around yours.

He tells you that he could say he loves you back, if you give him time. He tells you why he can’t say the words back yet, and you listen in silence, running a comforting digit over the back of his servo. By the time he finishes his story, Cybertron is long gone, yet he still keeps those entrancing red optics pointed towards the stars. 

You hold his hand a bit tighter. He doesn’t complain. He also doesn’t complain when you pull him close, wrapping big arms around him and resting your head on top of his. He just relaxes into the hold.

You tell him that you love him.

He sets a hand on your cheek and tells you that he loves you, too. And you’re sure you have a ridiculously surprised expression on your face by the way he bursts out laughing, but you’ll take eons of humiliation if you get to hear him laugh like that again. Eventually you get over your wonder, and you smile like the sun and tell him you love him, again and again and again.

And he tells you he loves you again, and again, and again.

You tell him that you love him. 

He tells you that he loves you too. You no longer react with the same wonder you once did-- on the outside, at least. Inside your chassis, your spark lights up like a supernova and you feel warm, and you want to hold him tight and never let him go. It’s like a triple shot of high grade every time you hear him say it, even in the most casual of contexts, because you know what it means for him to say that and you know _he_ knows what it means for him to say that. And he says it anyways.

Because he loves you. He loves you, and you love him, and he doesn’t complain when you pull him away from the datapad he’s trying to read for the thousandth time and distract him by pressing countless kisses against cherry red plating that gleams in the golden light of Earth’s setting sun.

You tell him that you love him.

You’re quiet, because you have to be while you’re on this ship, because your leader is cruel and ruthless and won’t tolerate that kind of emotional nonsense under his command. And his loyal spy has optics and audials everywhere and will definitely report you if you’re caught. So you send the words along your lover’s private commlink, or you whisper it against his audial in the darkness of your habsuite after you’ve both retired for the evening, or you say it out in the field where everyone’s too busy fighting to hear you. 

Sometimes he says it back, and sometimes he just gives you a smile that says it well enough. This place hasn’t been good for him. His vanity has been used against him in an all-too-familiar way. You worry, but you don’t push him, and you will fix him as many times as he needs you to and you’ll do so without a word of protest. Because you love him, and he loves you, too.

You tell him that you love him.

You say it casually as you get up to leave for the mission you’ve been called on, and he says it back as well, absently. He’s preoccupied with whatever he’s doing at the desk. You leave, and you’re briefed on what the _real_ purpose of this mission is, and you think someone else might be a little better suited but you’re given an order and so you’ll follow it. He loves your obedience, how well you follow orders-- even though he’s not here, you don’t want to disappoint him.

She makes you angry. And you get stupid when you get angry, as he’s told you on many occasions and as you’ve admitted to yourself. But knowing something about yourself doesn’t mean you can stop it from happening. So you ignore the shouting following you as you run after her, weapon raised and teeth bared.

You realize too late that you’ve ended up right where she wants you, and you catch sight of her sick grin before there’s pain and you don’t see anything anymore.

You want to tell him that you love him.

But you’re not _you_ anymore. You’re the barest hints of awareness, a flicker of light in optics lit by something unnatural. You’re angry, and you’re hungry, and there’s something else inside you-- _two_ somethings inside you that aren’t _you_ and everything feels wrong. You hear screaming, and you’re not sure if it's yours, or his, or from the sickening substance clinging to what remains of your thoughts, or if it's from the thing inside you. 

You want to tell him that you love him. 

But you’re dead, and you know you should have told him more before you died but you didn’t. You just hope you told him enough that he doesn’t forget it.

You want to tell him that you love him but you’re not even really there, and you’re not even really _real,_ and you don’t exist in a way that lets you see him as anything but an outside observer. But he has a new place, and he has new people, and while they’ll never be you and you know he’ll never have anyone like you again, he’s not alone, and it’s enough to soothe what’s left of you. It’s enough to comfort you with the knowledge that he won’t be alone if things go wrong. That he’ll have people he can lean on if the things that linger in the back of his mind become too loud to ignore. 

He’ll remember you love him.

**Author's Note:**

> hehe seeker KO
> 
> a select few people will Understand what kind of projection fic this is. if you know u know.


End file.
